The Best Love I Have to Give

Family quarrels are bitter things.  They don't go by any rules.  They're not like aches or wounds; they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material.  ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

I love quotes.  I love little sentences that make me think, that kick my mind into gear.  My sweet Aunt June passed away yesterday and I'm sitting here thinking of her family.  As any family, they had their share of problems, of trials, of faults but, at the end of the day, when their mother was called home, this family, my cousins pulled in together as...well, as a family.

At the end of the day, a loving family should find everything forgivable.  ~Mark V. Olsen and Will Sheffer

I'm thinking of my family and what it was like when my father died.  We didn't pull together, not really.  We pulled apart.  It seems there is always a side to be taken, someone always has to choose where they stand or who they want to be with.  Someone always gets angry because one person had more information or had it before another.  Someone always thinks someone else got more than they did.  Where does this come from?  Why can't we forget all this counting and just be a family?  Why can't we focus on our strengths as people, as siblings in the same miserableness rather than pick each others bones like old crows?  Why can't we just love each other?

The hardest-learned lesson:  that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.  ~Mignon McLaughlin

It seems we were taught to love with strings.  To love each other simply was not enough.  As children, our gifts were never appreciated, and certainly not cherished.  Love WAS conditional.  Some have overcome this, some have hardened to it, and maybe we all still succumb to it every now and again.   I have found that the best we can do is to love the way we want to be loved, the best we can and to know that the love we get in return is the best love someone else can give back to us.  It's the most, best love we are capable of.  I'm sad we carried all of these love conditions into being grown ups.  I don't like it and I don't want to do it any more.

Family is just accident.... They don't mean to get on your nerves.  They don't even mean to be your family, they just are.  ~Marsha Norman

I love my family.  I love my sisters more than they will ever know.  One goal of my life is to love my sisters better, to get closer to them and for all of us to know that we all love each other even though we may have different and closer/distant relationships with another but, we still love the others just as much.  I love the fun I have with A sister but, I also love talking books with B sister or crafting with C sister.  I don't love any one of them less than another we just have different common ground.  We may not always  play well together but, they're my sisters.  Though we all came from the same parents, we can't all be the same person.

Our siblings.  They resemble us just enough to make all their differences confusing, and no matter what we choose to make of this, we are cast in relation to them our whole lives long.  ~Susan Scarf Merrell

I look at my cousins, their closeness, the time they spend together as sisters and I want that!  I want my sisters to laugh with, to appreciate, to be a part of - ALL the time!  Not just sometimes.  I have 3 AMAZING sisters and I want to step off in a new direction, laughing and in love with them - ALL of them.  And they with me.  My sisters, are AMAZING!  And I choose to see them as AMAZING (we all have our not so amazing moments and I love those too but, my point here is NOT to focus on those).  I'm not looking at their faults, I'm looking at their talents, at their hearts.  I am choosing to make myself better, to be more, to be engaged, to be open, to be closer.  I choose to love my sisters with the best love I have to give.

If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child.  ~Linda Sunshine